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Harrah's Club 'all Toby All the Time'

The VIP booths will look like Ford pickups and an American flag will circle the ceiling at I Love This Bar & Grill!, a $9 million project country superstar Toby Keith announced Friday with Harrah's Las Vegas.

"The whole concept will be -- what they told me this morning was, all Toby all the time," the singer said at Harrah's on the afternoon of his sold-out arena concert at Mandalay Bay.

The 17,000-square-foot restaurant and club is slated to open next summer in a location built out from the existing hotel, connecting to the south side of Harrah's monorail station. Harrah's will open a second location at its Kansas City, Mo., casino.

"It's gonna reek with attitude and personality," said the Oklahoma-based singer, who attended the afternoon news conference in jeans with holes in both knees. He told reporters that early architectural renderings might even be a little too fancy.

"The video (shown at the news conference) is a lot slicker than what we're shooting for," Keith said. "It's gonna be Mason jars -- you're gonna get your beers in Mason jars -- cowhide and wood and denim and tin and barbwire fence." The restaurant will include exclusive video and a replica of Keith's tour bus. But he said fans shouldn't expect to see him on the club's stage. "As far as performing there, it's not as big a venue as we're playing now."

However, he added, "I come out here for other functions too, so obviously this will be my first stop. If I'm gonna have a cold one, I'm gonna go to my bar."

Though he says he's "an extremely conservative Democrat," Keith often has been branded as a right-wing celebrity after his post-Sept. 11 anthem "The Angry American (Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue)" and a well-publicized feud with the Dixie Chicks.

But Tom Jenkin, Western Division president of Harrah's Entertainment, said he saw no negative repercussions for the gaming company. "Toby epitomizes patriotism, and I think that runs in Republican circles and Democrat circles and that was never a concern of ours," he said. "When you talk to Toby about patriotism, he's talking about the troops and the people in uniform. I've never heard him talk about politics."

Keith was approached with the idea by Don Marrandino, a Harrah's executive who once headed Sunset Station, where Keith often performed before his popularity soared.

Marrandino signed Sammy Hagar to a similar themed club now at Harrah's Lake Tahoe. Jenkin said Hagar's Cabo Wabo Cantina is "off the chart" in popularity, tripling the revenue of the Mexican restaurant that was in the space.

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